The Chamber of Commerce has expressed dismay that the country will incur an annual cost of between €24 and €29 million in subsidies for the new public bus service and called on the government to seriously reconsider the matter.

It said in a statement that while it acknowledged the importance of public transport reform, it feared this outlay might recreate a “drydocks situation” which the country eventually managed to successfully and bravely resolve.

Besides the amount of subsidy involved, the situation was reminiscent of the drydocks because the country had, so far, never managed to adequately reform public transport and there were no guarantees that the next attempt would be successful.

The Chamber said the reported outlay ran counter to a clear recommendation made in its economic vision for Malta that “investment in infrastructure must be sustainable and should not result in increases in the debt to national GDP levels of Malta”.

It noted that at half of the subsidy cost promised to the bus operator, the authorities could have offered Malta’s highest energy-dependent companies utility tariffs equivalent to the EU average, thereby providing a boost to the country’s export competitiveness and safeguarding precious jobs.

It called on the government to “seriously reconsider” its position on the deliverables of this new attempted reform in an effort to ensure judicious use of public funds.

“If the reported figures are correct, the level of annual subsidy cannot be justified in terms of any derived national economic benefit,” it said.

In another statement, the Gozo University Group expressed concern at the possible rise of bus fares.

"The thought (that the price may increase) is of great concern not only for Gozitan students who use the bus to get to University and back but also for  Maltese students who use it daily.

"GUG highly recommends that bus fares for students should remain untouched
since the raising of bus fares would discourage the use of public transport."